Maverick musician

collaborative art

Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, now a Chennai-based musician, began playing the mridangam at the age of five in Shanmukhananda Hall, Mumbai. He was under the tutelage of T S Nandhakumar, his first guru. Then he left for the US at the age of nine but continued learning the percussion there from Venkat Natarajan, a disciple of vidwan T H Subash Chandran, who later became Akshay’s mentor and guru.

It was in the US that Akshay had his arangetram. He thought it was a “very different experience, actually.” “It was my second big stage performance. Chitravina Ravikiran sir sang, Subash sir was on the ghatam and konnakol, Venkat sir was on the kanjira, and I played the mridangam,” he recalled.

Akshay moved to Chennai after completing his Master’s in Engineering. It was a music-technology programme for his PhD that pushed him to pursue music as his profession. His persuasion led him to become not only a percussion player, but also a music curator and researcher of music technology.

He collaborated with IIT Madras and New York University for projects related to multicultural music production and the “creation of automated music descriptors for Carnatic music.” And through these he published two international academic papers about “automated stroke transcription and stroke analysis of mridangam.”

Akshay mentioned that “he recently organised a workshop on rhythm in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi University,” and explained about it — “We brought scholars from across the globe to discuss rhythm. During one of my talks, I demonstrated the longest tala in Indian music. Simhanandana tala — a 128-beat cycle with irregular angas. Interestingly, I found out that a similar long cycle exists in Arabic music!”

Academics may be an important part of Akshay’s life, but he grasped the sense and play of music within a city from his experiences in Chennai. “Here, I have had to start from scratch, but with a lot of hard work and right opportunities, things have been working out well for me,” he said.

A regular at Chennai December Music Season since 2002, he received the Best Mridangist award last year from the Music Academy. He also said he had the opportunity to perform with senior artistes like R K Srikantan, O S Thyagarajan, Chitravina Ravikiran, Rama Ravi and Shashank, and  perform alongside his contemporaries like Ramakrishnan Murthy, Sandeep Narayanan, Sriranjani Santhanagopalan, Rithvik Raja, Vignesh Ishwar, Ashwath Narayanan, Jayanth (flautist), Sruthi Sagar (flautist) et al.

Akshay explained the off-music season of Chennai thus: “The season is an experience by itself. And everything quietens after the frenzy. But there are all kinds of art and artistes in the city, which means concerts and festivals happen frequently. One gets to meet people, interact and exchange ideas. It’s inspiring and energising.”

Within India, he remembered two performances that made for memorable experiences. “Once, at Maha Kumbh Mela in Varanasi, I played the mridangam. It was for a group of Harvard students studying the social aspects of the mela. There were thousands of people and a mad rush. One tent was full of sadhus who chanted and smoked while they discussed religion and philosophy. In another tent food was being cooked... That was some experience.”

And then there was the performance at Kapaleeshwarar Temple, where he “got a good feeling, and still does.”

His music concerts reached foreign shores as well. “Last year, I toured Europe with Shanthala (flautist), and this spring I had the opportunity to go on my first full US tour with senior artistes O S Thyagarajan and Mysore Srikanth (violinist). I will perform with Sudha Raghunathan this fall.”

Surprising the audience

There was one particular musical incident during his US tour that he recalled: “I was asked by Thyagarajan sir to incorporate konnakol in my taniavarthanams. After the performance, people came up to me and said that they really liked the combination of konnakol and mridangam. I had watched and absorbed the concept of konnakol as a performative art from Subash sir.”

Some other artistes whom Akshay admires are Palghat Raghu, Palghat Mani Iyer, T K Murthy, Palani Subramaniam Pillai, T V Gopalakrishnan and Karaikudi Mani.

About the differences between performing in India and abroad, he explained, “The focus is only on classical music here. Abroad, I collaborate classical music with Jazz and other music genres. In Europe, I have noticed that people stay till the end of a performance and the reception to a percussionist and other instrumentalists is heartening. Here, most people leave once the thaniyavarthanam begins.”

After pondering a bit, Akshay remarked, “Maybe the onus is more on us, maybe we should do something to captivate the audience more. We need to practise as a team. With other percussion instruments on stage, there is little time to paint a story the way the giants of mridangam used to. Then there are the power cuts, very normal.”

About his current collaborations, Akshay said, “IndianRaga is one organisation that I have been working with. They brought me as one of their first Fellows with the vision to create new-age digital pieces for Carnatic music. That aside, we worked on Indian Raga labs, which aimed to expose the students of music to the studio and video experience, while also creating a final musical product. It happened in every major city in the US, in Chennai and in Bengaluru.”